If Forever Comes (Take This Regret #2)(16)
Author: A.L. Jackson

A key rattled in the lock. The front door unlatched and it slowly whined open.

My pulse stuttered. Not in fear, but because I didn’t think I could handle this today.

Every time, it was the same.

“Liz?” traveled up the stairs on a direct pathway to my unwilling ears.

Natalie.

I didn’t respond. Instead I gripped the pillow, forcing my face deep into the fabric. Maybe if I bored into it hard enough, it would swallow me whole. Maybe…maybe I could just disappear.

Footsteps creaked on the stairs. “Liz?” she called again, quieter this time. I squeezed my eyes tighter when I felt her presence emerge. My bedroom door sitting half ajar slowly swung open all the way.

Tension hovered as a thick silence between us before, “Elizabeth,” finally flooded into my room on a troubled breath.

Gathering the energy, I forced myself to turn toward her. I rested my cheek on the pillow, blinking over at my cousin who stood in my doorway with worry etching every line on her young face.

She’d grown her hair out a bit, the dark blonde locks curling in a soft wave just over her shoulders. She wore her normal—a thin, over-sized sweatshirt with the neck cut out so it hung loosely off one shoulder, short-short cutoffs, and flip-flops. She turned up a soft smile.

Casual and kind. She always was.

“Hey,” she said quietly as she chanced a step into my room.

“Hey,” I returned, my voice scratchy against my dry throat. I tried to pretend as if I was happy to see her. And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to see her, that I didn’t care about her or want her to be here. It was just the way she looked at me, as if she could possibly understand. Sympathy I didn’t want oozed from her pores. Her movements were slow as she came to stand at the edge of my bed, like maybe if she touched me, I would break.

She seemed unwilling to accept that I was already broken.

“It’s time to get up, sweetheart,” she almost cooed as she reached out and brushed the hair from my forehead. “I’m here to pick you up. We’re going to go to lunch with your mom and your sisters.”

Internally I cringed. I knew it wasn’t their intention, but these interventions always felt more like an ambush.

“You should have called first. I don’t think I’m feeling up to it today.”

Though she tried to hide it, frustration leaked from her sigh. “Come on, Elizabeth. You’re never up for it. And you and I both know if I’d have called, you just wouldn’t have answered. You need to get out of this house. It’s just an hour or two.” She strode across my room and raked the drapes back from the window.

Bright light burned into the room. I blanched at the unwelcomed intrusion.

She headed back to the entryway. “Now go jump in the shower. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”

“Nat…” I mumbled, just wishing she would leave me alone.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re going to lunch, Elizabeth. You need to eat and your family needs to see you. Two birds with one stone and all.” She kind of laughed, though there was little humor to it. It sounded more like disappointment.

I rolled onto my back and draped my arm over my eyes. “What time is it?”

“Just after eleven…which means it’s time to get up. Now scoot.”

Resigned, I sat up on the side of the bed with my back to Natalie. I willed myself to leave the place that was my only reprieve. The only remedy for the bleakness of this life was found in the obscured blackness of sleep. Not in the pills they promised would make me feel better but instead just intensified the aching numbness. Not in the counseling sessions that did nothing but stir up the pain, those anguished hours that only amplified the loss.

All I wanted was to sleep.

I didn’t dream. I didn’t see. I didn’t hurt.

I didn’t exist.

Get up, I screamed at myself from within my mind.

Sucking in a breath, my feet hit the floor and I pushed myself to stand. Pain rocketed through my body. Something physical. Something real.

Clenching my hands into fists at my sides, I swallowed down the tears that worked their way to my eyes, hoping Natalie wasn’t there reading my posture from behind.

“Go on,” she prodded at my back.

I forced myself to nod and plodded into my bathroom. I turned the shower as hot as it would go and let it warm up as I shed the clothes I’d worn for days. Grimacing, I stepped into the steaming shower.

Blistering heat scorched me as the water pelted my skin. I made myself stay under it, wishing it could somehow burn this sorrow away, begged for it to cleanse my spirit the same way it did my body.

But it was no use. Unrelenting anguish built up in my chest and burst from my mouth and eyes. Beneath the shower, I placed my hands on the wall and dropped my head, bending at the middle as I gasped for breath. For countless minutes, I gave into it and let myself cry, let my grief go unseen in the water that pounded on my head and back. It streaked in rivulets down my body then dripped onto the tiles of the shower floor before it disappeared down the drain.

Gone.

I clutched my stomach as I wept.

Gone.

And I knew this hurt would never fade.

Swallowing around the emotion lumped in my throat, I forced it all back inside, searching for the numbness. The last thing I needed was for Natalie to think she needed to come up here to check on me. Quickly I washed, then turned off the shower.

I dried and dressed. Mindlessly I ran a brush through the long length of my hair.

I didn’t dare look in the mirror.

Inhaling, I searched inside myself for some semblance of normalcy, and I trained my expression as I left my room and started down the stairs. I gripped at the railing as I took them one by one.

Natalie looked up from where she stood in front of the couch, facing the stairs as she folded laundry.

“You don’t need to do that,” I fumbled through the embarrassment that surged through me.

“Pssh.” She smiled a smile that was much too fake. “I don’t mind laundry at all.” She inclined her head to the towering pile. “Besides, it looks like you could use some help.”

I knew she meant it to be nice, but it punched me in the chest. I’d become helpless. Worthless. I couldn’t even fold my daughter’s laundry. It was pathetic.

What was hardest for me was the fact that Christian was still financially taking care of me. Every two weeks, he deposited money into the account we shared, one we’d opened together as we’d started out on what was supposed to be our life together. A life I now had to accept was never meant to be. He never touched any of it, either, and I knew he left that money for me.